The dental restoration of a partially or wholly edentulous patient with artificial dentition is typically done in two stages. In the first stage, an incision is made through the gingiva to expose the underlying bone. An artificial tooth root, in the form of a dental implant, is placed in the jawbone for osseointegration. The dental implant generally includes a threaded bore to receive a retaining screw for holding mating components thereon. During the first stage, the gum tissue overlying the implant is sutured and heals as the osseointegration process continues.
Once the osseointegration process is complete, the second stage is initiated. Here, the gingival tissue is re-opened to expose an end of the dental implant. A healing component or healing abutment is fastened to the exposed end of the dental implant to allow the gingival tissue to heal therearound. It should be noted that the healing abutment can be placed on the dental implant immediately after the implant has been installed and before osseointegration. In recent years, for some situations, the osseointegration step and gingival healing steps have been combined into a one-step process.
Further, in recent years, scanning technology has been used to identify the conditions in the patient's mouth adjacent to a dental implant by scanning the patient's mouth with a scannable healing abutment or another scanning member installed on the implant. Alternatively, an impression may be taken of the patient's mouth, and the scan is taken of the impression or a stone model created from the impression. Ultimately, the data from these various scans is used to create a model that is used to develop a custom prosthesis for attachment to the patient's dental implant.
In one exemplary healing abutment system, informational markers or codes are located on a top surface of the healing abutments. The informational markers can be used to identify information about the specific healing abutment (e.g., the orientation of its non-rotational feature, the dimensions of the healing abutment, etc.). Thus, each healing abutment has exactly one specific code on the top surface. Once the code for that healing abutment is identified (e.g., using scanning techniques), the size (e.g., platform diameter, emergence-profile shape, maximum body diameter, height, overall external geometry, etc.) of that healing abutment can be determined by reference to a library that correlates the code and the specific healing abutment. This library is relatively small (e.g., less than 50 codes, less than 40 codes, less than 30 codes, etc.) as each specific size of healing abutment has a single code. For example, a healing abutment having a 3.4 mm platform diameter, a 3.8 mm maximum body diameter, and a 3 mm height always has the same code represented on the top surface thereof using, for example, one or more informational markers in the shape of notches. Thus, if a manufacturer only sells healing abutments in ten different sizes, then only ten codes are needed to be placed on corresponding top surfaces of the healing abutments for use in identifying the ten different healing abutments. Once the size information and the orientation information of the healing abutment are obtained using the library, a location and orientation of an underlying implant attached to the healing abutment can be determined, which is needed for development of patient-specific components to be attached to the implant. In essence, the codes provide information about the implant and the shape of the opening in the gingival tissue leading to the implant. This type of system is generally described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,790,040, assigned to the assignee of the present disclosure, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
In one exemplary system, a temporary healing component is scanned prior to being placed in the mouth of a patient and then scanned after being attached to an implant in the mouth of the patient. Such scans are then used to develop an implant level three-dimensional model of the patient's dental conditions for use in designing and/or fabricating a final prosthesis. However, the scanning of the temporary healing component has some drawbacks as compared with the use of codes thereon to develop the three-dimensional model as the level of captured details of the scanned temporary healing component are limited by the ability of the scanner.